Place:Ilketshall St. Margaret, Suffolk, England

NameIlketshall St. Margaret
Alt namesSt Margaret, Ilketshallsource: Wikipedia
Ilketshall-St. Margaretsource: Family History Library Catalog
TypeParish
Coordinates52.4153°N 1.4533°E
Located inSuffolk, England
See alsoWangford Hundred, Suffolk, Englandhundred in which it was located
Wangford Rural, Suffolk, Englandrural district of which it was part 1894-1935
Wainford Rural, Suffolk, Englandrural district of which it was part 1935-1974
Waveney District, Suffolk, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Ilketshall St Margaret is a village and civil parish in the north of the English county of Suffolk. It is south of the market town of Bungay in the East Suffolk district. The parish is part of the area known as the Saints and had a population of 160 at the 2011 United Kingdom census.

The parish is sparsely populated and situated to the west of the A144 road between Bungay and Halesworth.[1] It borders the parishes of Bungay, Ilketshall St John, Ilketshall St Lawrence, Spexhall, Rumburgh, St Michael South Elmham, St Peter South Elmham, and Flixton.

The parish church is dedicated to St Margaret. It dates from the early 11th century and features a round tower, one of around 40 round-tower churches in Suffolk. The village is mentioned in W. G. Sebald's novel The Rings of Saturn.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Ilketshall St. Margaret from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"ILKETSHALL-ST. MARGARET, a parish in Wangford [registration] district, Suffolk; 3 miles S by E of Bungay [railway] station. It has a postal letter box under Bungay. Acres: 2,085. Real property: £3,311. Population: 326. Houses: 65. The property is much subdivided. The manor belongs to Sir R. Shafto Adair, Bart. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Norwich. Value: £121. Patron: the Duke of Norfolk. The church is ancient, has a round Norman tower, and was recently restored. There are a national school, and charities £38."
the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

The "Saints" are a group of parishes (usually with a village) in Suffolk, England, between the rivers Blyth and Waveney near to the border with Norfolk. The parishes are all named after their general area of South Elmham (to the west) or Ilketstall (to the east) plus the saint to which their parish church is dedicated. Known by locals as 'up the Parishes' the area is found between the small towns of Halesworth, Harleston, Bungay and Beccles.

During World War II signposts were removed which resulted in many US Airman having difficulty finding the way back to RAF Bungay at Flixton and other local airfields including Metfield. Ilketshall is named after the 'hall of Alfkethill'. South Elmham comes from the Anglo-Saxon "hamlet where elms grew" and is first mentioned in Domesday Book of 1086 as "Almeham". North Elmham is in Norfolk, thirty miles away.

The formal names of each of "the Saints" parishes are as follows:

Each of the villages were ancient or ecclesiastical parishes and to the present also constitutes a civil parish, apart from South Elmham All Saints and South Elmham St. Nicholas, which are now joined together in the South Elmham All Saints and St Nicholas parish within Waveney District.

This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at The Saints, Suffolk. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.


Research Tips

  • A map of Suffolk from 1900 provided online by A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography) can be enlarged to view individual parishes. Careful inspection will usually lead to the discovery of smaller hamlets founded before 1900. The rural districts (marked with their names printed in blue) are those in existence in 1900, not those introduced in 1934. The more ancient hundreds are marked in red. Most (but not all) parish names are underlined in red.

Suffolk Information

  • Suffolk Family History Society A community of people who are interested in the local and family history pertaining to Suffolk.
  • Suffolk Archives (Record Office) ( e-mail archives@suffolk.gov.uk) - The Suffolk Archive has branches in Ipswich (at The Hold, 131 Fore Street, Ipswich, IP4 1LR), Bury St. Edmunds (at 77 Raingate Street, Bury St Edmunds, IP33 2AR) and Lowestoft (at Lowestoft Library, Clapham Road South, Lowestoft, NR32 1DR). Includes: a good-looking website, research services and publications.
  • Suffolk Churches This is an excellent guide to most of the Suffolk Churches with lots of pictures and descriptions of the architecture and history. It includes many chapels. If you have trouble visiting Suffolk to see where your ancestor were baptised, married and buried, or even those who want to just add to their knowledge, this is the site for you.

For those whose families may have wandered over the county borders:

British Government Information

  • The National Archives or "TNA" - More than 850,000 Probate Wills from 1610-1858 (PCC wills dating back to 1670 have been completed). Free access to indexes but copy of a will costs £10.00. (Ancestry has an index to wills published after 1858.) Access also available to the Domesday Book, World War One Diaries and various other information. Their catalogue called Discovery holds more than 32 million descriptions of records held by The National Archives and more than 2,500 archives across the country including County Record Offices. Over 9 million records are available for download.
  • The British Library - This vast collection contains millions of bibliographic records, British newspapers, many now digitised and searchable on-line and much more.
  • Commonwealth War Graves Commission - The database lists the 1.7 million men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died during the two world wars and the 23,000 cemeteries, memorials and other locations world-wide where they are commemorated. The register can also be searched for details of the 67,000 Commonwealth civilians who died as a result of enemy action in the Second World War.
  • General Register Office - provides official copies of birth marriage & death certificates for England & Wales.
  • FreeBMD - provides Civil Registration index information for England and Wales. The transcribing of the records, by volunteers, is ongoing and contains well over 279 million records at August 2020. Records are complete from 1837 to 1983. Later records are not complete.
  • FreeCEN - provides a "free-to-view" online searchable database of the UK census returns from 1841 to 1891. The transcribing of the records, by volunteers, is ongoing and contains well over 39 million records at August 2020. At that time Suffolk records appeared to be only for the 1891 census and a few for the 1871 census.
  • FreeREG - provides baptism, marriage, and burial records, which have been transcribed, by volunteers, from parish and non-conformist church registers in the UK. There are over 49 million entries with just under 300,000 records for Suffolk at August 2020.
  • Ministry of Defence (url not found)- provides information for obtaining details about service records post 1920
  • Royal Air Force Museum (url not found) - for information on the archive and library research material available.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at St Margaret, Ilketshall. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.